Hard Day

Life is getting hard these days just five hours sleep, 3-4 hours for personal task which includes getting ready, having meal and cooking food. I am lot burned out for the past two days with remaining hours with work. Have to figure out a way to get rid of being workaholic.

Pontiac

Had a ride in Pontiac Solace, it was just superb. I had an amazing experience.

Feel Good

I love this character "Archana" from Mozhi Tamil movie, a gal who lives a life filled with unexpectedness. As a normal human being it is very difficult to lead a life without any anticipation. Quite often I always crave for one thing from most of my friends that is a bond of true affection and care. I had many unreliable friends in the past that made me turn into an unthoughtful personality. But today I feel so good that I came across many who really bother about me. My honorable friends some pinged while some called me to inquire why I was not showing any interest to participate in this year’s tennis tournament. In the evening few of my friends were feeding me popcorn and couple others were inquiring about my health. Now in spite of being pooled with such cherubic people, I still have the nature of unexpectedness binding with me somewhere.

Idli

Idli, Dosa and Sambar is frequently eaten South-Indian dish that most of us do not find it that easily in U.S. One has to travel at least a distance of five miles to taste one in U.S. It's a pain to prepare cushy Idli's at home without Indian mixie/grinder. After several attempts we have now learnt the techniques to prepare soft Idli's in U.S, even during severe winter our methods work. Due to drastic climate, quite often it takes long time for Idli batter to puff up. In spite of all pullbacks we ate plenty of Idlis in today's dinner.

Heavy Rain

I had a horrible experience of missing the last bus, travelling in heavy rain and viewing the lightening brightness besides my super Keralite lunch.

Tango

Dance is something I love to watch people do and also at times do like dancing in private. Gone are my college days when I was a part of the group dance and at the end of the show my friends come back asking me to clarify whether our batch gals performed a group or a solo dance? Dance has its wonders in everyone’s soul. I experienced it whenever I was pulled in for a group dance practice. One has the greatest pleasure in life, when one knows to move freely to any kind of tune.

Classical or western dance is just amazing to watch/feel the free movements. I watched different types of couple dances such as Tango, Waltz, and Salsa etc from the movie "Take the Lead". I kept admiring every action of the dancers in this movie even though I pitched in at the later half of the movie

Punctuality

I have heard that Americans are very punctual and do not prefer wasting others time by being late. For this reason during my initial days at onsite I used to go five minutes before the scheduled time for each meeting. My first client was very cool and understandable and never bothered even if I pitched in late, those made me take things for granted. My client’s attitude made me stop worrying about being late for each meeting whenever I was held with some important task.

But there is one person who awfully yelled at me very recently for being late by 2-5 minutes for one appointment. That made me realize how Americans are very concern about being on time. I do not blame him for scolding me but understood the importance of being punctual. That incident switched me back to be on time for any appointments/meetings. It is advisable to go early but never late. Today we had our status meeting with our folks at 5p.m, last time I was the first person to reach the meeting room and after 10-15 minutes people showed up, so this time I decided to start bit late for the meeting. When I opened the meeting room door at 5.10 P.M, I only saw my manager in the big meeting room. After couple of minutes, people came in and the room became quite occupied.

The way Indians value time is completely different from the way Americans do and this is something each one of us have to learn from U.S people of being punctual no matter what and avoid giving excuses.

Busy Bee

Being busy is always good at least for me, as I hardly get time to think about my worries, happiness and sorrows. Day my day I only feel my energy level is increasing in some of my area of interests and completely dying out in the ones I hate the most. In order to retain a proper health conditions I like to lead a balanced life. I can not tolerate when few of my regular activities slip due to my busy schedule. I had to compromise on few things late night which I didn't prefer to do.

BlogStep#2

Penning down why I started to blog on my personal day to day activities. When I decided to blog I had to think for some topic that would trigger me to write everyday. If I were to write on something generic and informative it would be impossible to blog everyday. Thereby I finalized to record small/interesting/unforgettable things in my mundane life. This blog was not written to pass any useful information to others but was solely written only to satisfy my personal needs. I strongly believed and still believe that if one can not express about one-selves, one for sure can not verbalize about any damn thing to others, so started off to see how well and precisely I can utter about my interest to the public.

I had three solid reasons why I wanted to write about myself. I had a penchant to get into management side for which one required a skill set of strong communication both written and oral. This was the strong ground for me to start blogging. August 2009 was also the same month when my parents seriously started to look for my marriage proposals. I was willing to get married to someone who knows and understands my thought flow for at least a year but typical arranged marriages never allow people to interact for such a long tenure. That was the second reason why I decided to write about me for the duration of one year. Over course of time I figured out that I was taking long time to draft even the simplest mail to my friends, which clearly made me realize that I lacked writing skills. To work on my writing skills became the third cause to compose regularly. I hope this post answers the question why "Ashwini" is so disciplined to complete her write up daily.

My favorite GS

I love to watch Wimbledon when compared to other grand slams just for the serene white suits worn by the players. I can not forget last year’s finals between Andy and Roger as I did nothing after waking up in the morning. I didn't brush, I didn't eat, I didn't even move an inch I only focused on the match. It was nail-biting as till the last minute no one could guess who would win 2009 Wimbledon championship. My friends were cursing me as I made them wait for long before heading to team lunch. I kept saying to myself in five minutes I should get ready but every point played was so interesting that I didn't feel like moving. I was very shocked today when I saw the score for round one between Federer and Falla in Wimbledon 2010. Catching up with Wimbledon scroes from this day.

Source of Inspiration

All I did today was sleep, sleep and sleep. I just woke up to have my lunch and went back to slumber again. After a long time I again got into the mode of listening to inspirational speeches. The below link is one such talk that I heard late night today.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ananda_shankar_jayant_fights_cancer_with_a_dance.html

Thriller Tree

The climate was cloudy and water was shaky that’s exactly what we needed for canoeing today. We took four canoes and three kayaks for a seven mile row. As expected I did my photographic work of clicking people while wearing their life jacket, canoeing in the turbulent water and dashing each others small boat. The sail was set and things appeared smooth until one of our friends splashed water on us using the paddle. It was more enjoyable chasing adjacent boats and splashing water on co-rowers. Our aim was to get everyone drenched by swashing but somehow two of our friends escaped from this play. We stopped in between to have our lunch and after 30 minutes break we started to row again. A tree on our left with its branch floating in water grabbed our attention.

As me and my partner were thinking to row towards the tree we steered casually and were excited to experience the thrill of sudden jerk after dashing the tree. Almost close to the same time two of our friends reached the spot and dashed the tree branch which made them lose balance and topple.

As we were pretty close to the tree we tried to see how much we could help our friend who was clinging to the tree branch. We got our canoe close to the branch were our friend was hanging. Before starting our rescue operation we tried to balance our canoe by holding the other side of the branch firmly. We called upon other members of our group to support our canoe but even the slightest touch of other canoes to the tree branch was making us lose the balance. We tried our full strength to pull our hanging friend inside our boat but due to heavy water current and imbalance we could not pull our friend in. In sometime we saw two of our friends approach us in their kayak and we hoped things would get better. To our dismay things worsened as the people who came in kayak tumbled and were pulled away in water so that increases the count of people floating in water.

Now it is just two of us me and my partner who are completely responsible to pull our hanging friend. Even the slightest hit to the branch sometime made us lose balance. Our friend’s neck was between the branch and the canoe any pull or push in wrong direction would only make her choke. When she screamed "I am unable to breath" we had no clue how to handle this situation. I was little afraid when I heard this and was every concern about her neck. At the same time few American rowers surrounded our canoe and tried providing us support to pull our friend. After few minutes of chaos we managed to get our friend in the canoe. Challenge now was to get the canoe out of the branch, I had to duck in my head to pull out and reminded in the same position for a while even after people shouted we are good to go.

After securing people we now had to hunt for the lost kayak and canoe. We found one kayak in the power boat traced by the Taylor falls canoeing operations team. We tried to reach the power boat but kept moving away from it. At last they threw a rope and we pulled ourselves to the back of the power boat to tie the kayak to our canoe. Immediately we tried to row forward but our canoe didn't move even an inch in spite of giving full strength from front and back rowers. I lost my strength at this point and sat still for 2-3 minutes and after a while my friend from back tried hard to move it forward. I took a breath of relief and continued my rowing activity.

Overall the experience of balancing the canoe between the tree branches was very thrilling.

Kiwi

Now everyone in my apartment is falling in love with this fruit kiwi. For the first time me and my roommates tasted this fruit. We were little afraid about wasting the box of Kiwi but now box is almost about to get over. Initially we didn't know how to eat this fruit. We didn't like this fruit when it was ripe as it was sour and tasted like ripe strawberry. After few days this fruit gave a combined taste of banana, mango and peach and it actually tastes amazing. Inner part of the fruit has a great color combination of green and black. Take a look at the fruit.

Shivery Style

Don't be shocked to see people with green or pink or yellow or lavender color hair in U.S. It is common to find people do many crazy things with their hair. It is also odd to view people wear studs on their forehead, nose, lips, tongue, stomach etc. Each individual in U.S have their own dressing sense of which some are appealing and some are awkward. I have never seen such a bizarre eye shadow color until I met this lady on my way back home.

Attitude

Wait something is missing says Mr. Han to Dre. Hmm.. It is attitude. I felt this scene was acted very naturally by Jaden Smith. When I saw the scene from "Karate Kid 2010" movie where Dre's mother goes crazy on repeating the same thing to Dre (played by Jaden Smith) to place his jacket in the stand and not just drop the jacket on the floor. I got reminded of my mother. There were many occasions during my childhood were I took my mother's word for granted. I never bothered as I always liked to trouble my mom. From "Karate Kid" I can only understand how irritating it is for our parents when their kids repeat the same mistake over and over again. I believe it is the predefined attitude that most of us have during our childhood to disobey our parents instructions.

Pick the Rt One

I love all my team members in 3.5 leagues. All are Americans except for me. All know to drive confidently except for me. All are expressive except for me. All are extremely healthy except for me. All wear miniskirt except for me. In spite of many odds between me and my team members they treat me like a kid and always give me free advice. I talk very less but listen more to my seniors in my team. My team members are extremely sweet, friendly and kind. I always feel we have a very strong team spirit. We manage to help each other when required. Everyone in my team has many personal problems but they all pretend being happy.

For the past two weeks we gals from our team have been hanging out for dinner after our weekly matches. Every week someone takes turn to express their concern about being married to the wrong person. Some mentioned they dated for more than 10 years before jumping into marriage. I smiled and thought such things are unimaginative in India. Some betrayals, some fights and some mismatches have caused many in my group to hate married life. However everyone is only advising me to get married to the right person and I am still not sure how and when I will figure who is the right guy for me. They were giving me many tips to choose the right guy. They also conveyed to get married only when I felt I have found my perfect match otherwise they suggested me to stay alone. After hearing many stories today I am very confused about this matter.

Sometimes

There were few occasions that sometimes made me worried for not being married in this age but there are many occasions that give me a felicitous feeling. I personally feel one should explore U.S when one is a bachelor. Life is more thrilling and fun-filling to diagnose unknown adventures here in America. The best part I love being a bachelor in U.S is the "To go boxes" after each party. During festival celebration and birthday parties’ quiet often bachelors are given higher preferences for arranging things. Family people invite bachelors for dinner, or lunch. Today I enjoyed a delicious lunch for a particular event with our friend’s family.

BlogStep#1

It is now time for me to start my count down to end tracking of my daily personal activities. My last blog in this site would be on 23rd July 2010, I have close to 49 posts to reach my initial target count of 360. I will try covering my blogging inspiration in between these 49 posts. Today I would just cover how and who motivated me to blog.

English is the subject that I hated the most during my school and college days. I remember the days when my dad used to bang my head with Wren Martin grammar book at four in the morning. He trained me hard but nothing related to grammar seeped into my mind. I hate writing essays and stories for English exams. I would land up scoring less mark in this favorite subject of mine. As I grew up I gradually understood the importance of this powerful language.

Importance of communication without this language across countries is undoubtedly difficult. Now I regret a lot for not grasping what my dad taught me early morning each day. As I love reading compared to writing I kept reading online materials.

I have been thinking to work on my writing skills for quite sometime but never got the determination to do so. One day someone indirectly sparked my mind. Yearly once we have tennis tournament conducted in MN. And as a part of this event we blog everyday's match covering the full details of the players. Once it so happened that none of the organizers could post for one of the matches played on a particular day. We later had to recommend one of our friends who witnessed the match to write few lines about the match. I was inspired by this person who set a benchmark for my writing skills. He documented the details in just 30 minutes. I was impressed and highly motivated by his noble-minded writing talent.

This incident was the starting point for me to step into blogging area.

MT

Until I reached U.S, this one never slashed me. When I traveled to onsite I believe the exchange rate was 38 and was only hoping it would still diminish. But to my surprise the exchange rate crossed 50's during the recession period. In general many working Indian's prefer doing a money transfer (MT) to family members in India when the exchange rate is high. Some Indians do consider many options such as money2India, remit2India, wells Fargo, NRI account etc. to cut down additional charges involved in money transaction between U.S and India. Mostly when the exchange rate is high one would not have enough bank balance to transfer. I explored a new type of money transfer this afternoon.

Worst and Best

Listening to songs is now part of our special dinner. We are now in the habit of playing worst and best album songs after our heavy meal. Silahaisila is the most popular among our folks for its choreography and brilliant camera tricks :).
Below are few other songs that we enjoyed and teased tonight:

Song about love marriage and this was dedicated to one of my roommates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TojTlYNNm9w

This song was dedicated to me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyeJ2dhtvjQ

Ever time favorite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOtW1IGoYqo

Our ever time worst hit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5MuXo-f3xY&feature=related

Mix of

My day started off with bad news from my dependent members. I was damn exhausted that I could not even sense anyone’s feelings when such news was conveyed to me. After sometime I heard extremely happy news about my new post. I never even dreamed to serve in this post in my lifetime so soon. This new post for sure will transform me a lot and make me more responsible and effective. I have umpteen plans to fulfill my small dreams through this new post. I am eagerly waiting for 1st July to take over my new post. Overall I had a mix of good and bad things today.

Fire Drill

When I was trying to hold my concentration to complete one of the critical tickets there was an announcement for a mock fire drill in our building. It was just not me who said "Oh no" there were couple others who echoed the same phrase along with me. I followed my infrastructure in-charge person to the exit door and moved causally to downstairs.

I was shivering a bit while walking in the windy weather. At last I met couple of friends who sat pretty close to my cube. We talked lot of things for a span of 10-15 minutes. We were bit surprised to see the number of people evacuating from our building as it was more than we had estimated. I don't find any major difference between the drills that I had in India and here.

Other Side

We landed up late by a minute for today's match. But my opponent team was kind enough to permit us play the match after negotiating for a penalty of two game points. I had no time for my warm ups I directly jumped to play the set with a starting score of 0-2. The match was tough and I gave my best to level my point with my opponent's score. I covered all corners of the court and for the first time I felt I was running like Serena Williams from one side to other to return the shots. After every point I had to take a break as our rallies ran for long minutes. I lost my first set with a difference of two points and in the second set; we had to abandon our match due to unavailability of court after 7.30. I felt very disappointed for stopping the match half way through. After all this I chit-chatted with my opponent and came to know that she was fifty years old and also conveyed she has a daughter of my age. I was bit shocked and a lot ashamed for not able to catch up with her running speed in my young age. I was thinking how agile I would be when I would turn fifty.

I complained about missing warm ups and scoring less points against an old lady to my captain. My captain drew many positive points from what happened. My captain mentioned warm ups before the match would have wasted some amount of your energy, skipping warm ups sometimes helps you to perform better. And for losing a set against an old lady is a great experience for you. Think it this way in this age you have competed with the most experienced person and when you grow old you will be damn experienced to play this sport. This consolation from my captain has now made me to look for positive aspects in each match.

GD

I got a broadcast message stating one of my colleague’s sons has a graduation day sometime this month. I ignored the message and kept doing my regular stuff in office. In the afternoon one of my friends bought be a graduate chocolate. Though I admired the design of the chocolate I could not finish eating it completely. People in U.S treat graduation day as one of the special occasion in their life. One can find graduation cards, candies and parties to honor this occasion which is not that popular in India. I feel such occasions would strongly encourage kids and adults to learn more. GD (GRADUATION DAY) also emphasis learning has to be filled with fun and frolic.

Cute and Tiny

I was closing my eyes now and then as I didn't sleep properly last night. I have been trying to concentrate on few things in the evening but couldn't absolutely do so. I have been trying hard to stay awake by talking a lot to my roommate this evening about the birthday party that I attended. After a while, I saw a very tiny being proceed from one direction to other. At first I thought it was due to sudden closing and opening of my eyes I had a weird feeling of movement under the conventional oven. But the feeling stayed for long, I was not sure what was happening around me. Later I saw a very cute creature standing on the kitchen mat. I whispered about this creature to my roommate and asked her to take a peep of the same. It kept moving in small gaps under our dishwasher and oven. We now have no clue how to get rid of this uninvited guest who might cause us some trouble at later point of time. For time being we are just keeping an eye on our living room.

Look who is staying in our house without our knowledge:

At last

As mentioned before I am very crazy about fancy watches. Any shop I enter I first look for watch section. I would quickly scan through to see if anything matches my taste. I have been hunting to get few good collections of watches and finally grabbed one today.

Dating

First time when I heard this word in college I was thinking people were mispronouncing the word "dated" as "dating". During college days, my knowledge was zero in any adult related matters. Now, one can understand how I would have interpreted the meaning of the word "Dating" without referring any dictionary. It was the titillating topic given to two of our friends for a management subject discussion. In the conversation both of my friends projected many plus and minus points about copying the culture of dating in India. All the guys of my class giggled, rolled, blushed and showed all sort of reaction when the talk was given on Dating in front of the whole class. Whereas all missies remained taciturn and motionless. As usual during presentations my mind started to wander and pulled me to think deep inside. I kept questioning myself is "Dating" important and how it would fit in our culture etc. The talk started on Dating and eventually landed in many other funny things related to the after math of implementing Dating in India. I still remember most of the points stated by two of my friends who were assigned with this topic.

After being in U.S for more than two years, now I know the full pledged meaning of dating. And my perception of dating is now completely different from what I had when I was in India. I was inquiring about someone very keenly from my clients during our lunch time. I didn't have any thought of what details I was trying to ask from them. My only intention was to know if it was the same person whom I quite often meet in my toastmasters meeting. After I was done with my questions, my client asked me are you planning to date with him or something? For a second I couldn't control my laughter as I got reminded of my college jokes on "Dating". I quickly chewed in what I had in my mouth and replied her back saying no, I was just interested to know if it was the same person whom I meet on a weekly basis every Tuesday.

Parenting

Parents play a significant role in their child's growth. Collective decision, love and attachment of both mother and father are needed during the upbringing of any child. Broken marriages, frequent fights within parents and detached feelings generally affect the kids in their tender age. Sometimes whenever I hear my clients say my husband’s kids are coming over this weekend, I feel pity for the kids who shuttle among father, mother and second mother. In U.S I have few American friends of my age who are living with divorced mothers married for the second time. Children in U.S have cool mentality when it comes to living with second or third father. I had a wretched feeling when I heard someone say my kids have gone to stay with my wife for six weeks. I have seen both extremes of parenting in U.S.

My Photos

I was feeling bit elated when people commented on the photos taken by me. Of course I am open to learn tips, tricks and to hear constructive feedbacks from my friends to improve my photographic skills. Today I heard couple of people give comforting comments about the photos taken by me during the long weekend. And few of my friends have added themselves as fans for my photo albums. I am stirred a lot to explore and polish my photographic interest from this day.

Adjustment

It is good to fix appointments\reservations well in advance in hospitals and restaurants but at the same time is also essential to make adjustments when needed. Last year, even though I started pretty early from office I landed up late for my eye check up as I was caught in very bad weather. I was not shown any mercy for being late but was only asked to either postpone or cancel the appointment. Such things are bit flexible in India were people try their level best to accommodate facilities when needed. In India one will not feel disappointed if they were late due to unavoidable reasons. Some kind of adjustments are always made to satisfy the customer in India, whereas in U.S no matter even if president Barack Obama shows up at the closing time of a restaurant the employees would only chuck you out by stating it is the closing time. This was the hot topic for today's discussion during dinner time.